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Initial reports on CBC yesterday at about 4:30PM were blaming the outage on an overload at the Niagra-Mohawk Power Grid. And since nobody really knows what caused the problem, it's best to blame it on a border town

I like how they said it was a lightning strike but there were no storms, no evidence of lightning, no radar imaging of lightning (you know the ghosting images that show strikes in the last x number of hours.

There were indications the blackout may have been triggered not in upstate New York or Canada, as many have speculated, but somewhere along Lake Erie in Ohio, according to the industry-sponsored group that monitors the transmission system.

"That's where the information is starting to point," Ellen Vancko, a spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, said in an interview. "It looks like that's where the collapse started."

I'm too lazy to read the whole thread, but in case somebody didn't already say it: Lightening hit the Niagara-Mohawk plant and overloaded the grid. At least that's what the ontario guys are saying. [img]images/smilies/wink.gif[/img]
Americans say that it's our fault.. because we're on an "unstable" grid.
Our government (federal) blames it on Pensilvenia nuclear power plant. [img]images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

A few people blamed it on Blaster Worm [img]images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

Oh wlel, at least I'm in Nova Scotia for the week instead of Ottawa. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]

It ain't Niagara Falls, dude. (see my post above). And I have yet to hear anyone blame it on Canada. In fact, I have yet to hear anyone but Canada blame it on anyone. It's more like a "We don't know yet" kind of line....

It's weird, because it seems to me that the general public kind of understands that it was a major failure without a known cause (as yet). And yet, our officials insist on repeating the latest rumors as the truth. In the past 16 hours, they've blamed everything from nuclear plants in Ohio to lightning in Niagra to generating stations in New York. I'm waiting for the defense minister to say it was Bill Gates attempting to protect his update servers.

It ain't Niagara Falls, dude. (see my post above). And I have yet to hear anyone blame it on Canada. In fact, I have yet to hear anyone but Canada blame it on anyone. It's more like a "We don't know yet" kind of line....

According to ABC news, it looks like someone in a power plant north of us in Parma Ohio didn't flip the switch to separate itself from the grid which caused it to spread all the way to the other areas affected. Someone working in a Pennsylvania power plant separated themselves from the grid which kept it from spreading as far south as Florida and west all the way to Colorado. I don't think the guy in Parma will have a job tomorrow.

According to ABC news, it looks like someone in a power plant north of us in Parma Ohio didn't flip the switch to separate itself from the grid which caused it to spread all the way to the other areas affected. Someone working in a Pennsylvania power plant separated themselves from the grid which kept it from spreading as far south as Florida and west all the way to Colorado. I don't think the guy in Parma will have a job tomorrow.

I think a few people will be out of a job.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.-----------------------------------------------------tinyplanet.org <--a nifty spot.

I don't think it will either, but you know how it goes, something goes wrong, it has to be "someone's fault". I think people are going to lose thier jobs even if "this disaster" wasn't thier fault and not just at the utility companies either.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.-----------------------------------------------------tinyplanet.org <--a nifty spot.

I don't think it will either, but you know how it goes, something goes wrong, it has to be "someone's fault". I think people are going to lose thier jobs even if "this disaster" wasn't thier fault and not just at the utility companies either.

The less people an important company has, the less the chance of someone screwing up.

I actually thought the shutoff was an automatic thing. I mean, come on, that is really expecting alot of people's reaction time to identify the problem accurately, react quickly and power down in a span of under 9 seconds...don't you think?

I actually thought the shutoff was an automatic thing. I mean, come on, that is really expecting alot of people's reaction time to identify the problem accurately, react quickly and power down in a span of under 9 seconds...don't you think?

I do think

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.-----------------------------------------------------tinyplanet.org <--a nifty spot.

Well, what a read. It's been one of the worst nights of my life, but also one of the best. It's still the largest outage in history, covering millions of square miles at it's height.

The funny thing is that besides one small part of the aforementioned Niagara grid, the system everywhere behaved exactly as it was designed to.

I really hope this doesn't become some massive "issue". It is an issue, because obviously we have things to learn (things we should have learned in 65 admittedly, but things nonetheless). We should make decisions on this issue more from a "we know more" than from a "the people care now" type position, in my opinion.

The second is reactionary, and will always lead to too many snap decisions. The first is analytical, which is really what is needed.

As far as blame stuff, the PM, Premier and Mayor of Toronto all refused to speculate on the causes and didn't do any blaming at all. Patacki did a little bit, Bush didn't seem to at all, and Bloomberg didn't as far as I'm aware.

As far as I'm concerned, all the government officials acted very very well. Kudos